Draws on letters, journals, memoirs, and other contemporary accounts to reveal the lives of women, of all stations, in seventeenth-century England.

The renowned historian and biographer Lady Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette, investigates the lot of women in seventeenth-century England. Drawing on period diaries, letters, and other papers, Fraser sketches portraits of a variety of women, both highborn and humble, during the tumultuous century between the death of Elizabeth and Queen Anne’s assumption of the throne. More than a collection of female biographies, The Weaker Vessel offers fresh insight into its subjects’ attitudes and lives, with appearances by heiresses and dairy maids, holy women and prostitutes, criminals and educators, widows and witches, midwives and mothers, heroines, courtesans, prophetesses, businesswomen, ladies of the court, and that new breed, the actress.

"An almost encyclopedic chronicle of women in 17th century England...wives, warriors, heiresses, preachers... alive with anecdote after anecdote." – The New York Times Book Review

I found this book on the discount shelves of a local used book store.

Left @ Mordecai Dr Little Free Library # 110445 @ 1417 Mordecai Dr, Raleigh NC #BookCrossing https://www.bookcrossing.com/hunt/1/36/19695/870672

I am buying books from the outside shelves at The Readers Corner (a Raleigh used book store) and releasing them. This is one of those books. If you like it, take it and write a journal entry at www.BookCrossing.com - its easy and anonymous. Then when you are done with it, find a nice person or place to release it. I look forward to reading your thoughts on this book and finding out where you got it from. This book is on an adventure we can share with it.